Curricular design that addresses residency physician competencies in communication skills and professionalism remains a challenge. Graphic Medicine uses comics, a medium combining text and images, to communicate healthcare concepts. Narrative Medicine, in undergraduate medical education, has limited reported usage in Graduate Medical Education. Given the time constraints and intensity of GME, we hypothesized that comics as a form of narrative medicine would be an efficient medium to engage residents.The authors created a novel curriculum to promote effective communication and professionalism, focusing (...) on empathy, compassion and cultural competency. A four-week curriculum was delivered in a neurology residency program. Excerpts from non-fiction graphic memoirs about neurological conditions were read, discussed, and paired with prompt-driven drawing exercises. Qualitative surveys were used to assess acceptability of comics, usefulness of comics to convey patient illness experience, and perception of patient needs for physician-patient communication.Ninety-seven percent of residents reported the sessions were a good use of their time. Residents identified new symptoms of neurologic disorders, articulated patient communication needs, and expressed increased empathy after participation. Residents participated in drawing exercises, but these were not formally analyzed. Graphic medicine is a well received format that may build communication skills and increase empathy. (shrink)

Medical classification systems aim to provide a manageable taxonomy for sorting diagnoses into their proper classes. The question, this paper wants to critically examine, is how to correctly systematise diseases within classification systems that are applied in a variety of different settings. ICD and DSM , the two major classification systems in medicine and psychiatry, will be the main subjects of this paper; however, the arguments are not restricted to these classification systems but point out general methodological and epistemological challenges (...) of classifying diseases for differing purposes. Deciding what qualifies as a disease to be included into a classification system as well as choosing a specific validator for correctly systematising diseases is complicated because the broad applicability of medical classification systems simultaneously appears as aim and challenge. Drawing upon the case study of classifying Alzheimer’s disease, this paper will address three dilemmas in designing ‘good’ medical classification systems. They are due to general epistemological problems of medicine, such as the relationship between individual manifestations of diseases and the necessity of building groups in order to scientifically elucidate causes of diseases. Moreover, they involve pragmatic issues of designing usable classifications that allow for easily discriminating between classes of diseases, restricting, however, the completeness of disease representations. This paper wants to trace how the choice of certain validators is unavoidably value-laden and deeply intertwined with epistemological assumptions of how different uses relate to each other, resulting either in a prioritisation of (constrained) coherence or of (vague) pluralistic connectibility. (shrink)

Next SectionThe current focus on early intervention trials in Alzheimer's disease research raises particular ethical issues. These arise out of problems of validating study results and translating them into general practice for one thing and out of unwanted effects of an uncertain diagnosis for diagnosed people for another. The first addresses the demands of scientific research compared to those of medical practice, questioning how the medical value of clinical trials is evaluated. The second relates the scientific and medical value of (...) early intervention trials to the normative value of an uncertain diagnosis. Are people who are diagnosed with a potential early form of AD in clinical studies patients proper—although they would not have been diagnosed with the given “disease” in non-research-oriented medical settings? The very problem of framing this question in terms of diagnostic misconceptions connects conceptual with ethical issues of research into preclinical stages of neurodegenerative diseases. (shrink)

Feminist relational theory can provide a theoretical framework for understanding and affirming the agency of women Cambodian religious leaders; an agency that can be overlooked if one assumes it co...

Medicine in a Neurocentric World: About the Explanatory Power of Neuroscientific Models in Medical Research and Practice Content Type Journal Article Category Editorial Notes Pages 307-313 DOI 10.1007/s12376-009-0036-2 Authors Lara Huber, University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Institute for History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine Am Pulverturm 13 55131 Mainz Germany Lara K. Kutschenko, University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Institute for History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine Am Pulverturm 13 55131 Mainz (...) Germany Journal Medicine Studies Online ISSN 1876-4541 Print ISSN 1876-4533 Journal Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 4. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 291-300, September 2022.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 291-300, September 2022.

This paper examines medical scientists’ accounts of their rediscoveries and reassessments of old materials. It looks at how historical patient files and brain samples of the first cases of Alzheimer’s disease became reused as scientific objects of inquiry in the 1990s, when a genetic neuropathologist from Munich and a psychiatrist from Frankfurt lead searches for left-overs of Alzheimer’s ‘founder cases’ from the 1900s. How and why did these researchers use historical methods, materials and narratives, and why did the biomedical community (...) cherish their findings as valuable scientific facts about Alzheimer’s disease? The paper approaches these questions by analysing how researchers conceptualised ‘history’ while backtracking and reassessing clinical and histological materials from the past. It elucidates six ways of conceptualising history as a biomedical matter: scientific assessments of the past, i.e. natural scientific understandings of ‘historical facts’; history in biomedicine, e.g. uses of old histological collections in present day brain banks; provenance research, e.g. applying historical methods to ensure the authenticity of brain samples; technical biomedical history, e.g. reproducing original staining techniques to identify how old histological slides were made; founding traditions, i.e. references to historical objects and persons within founding stories of scientific communities; and priority debates, e.g. evaluating the role particular persons played in the discovery of a disease such as Alzheimer’s. Against this background, the paper concludes with how the various ways of using and understanding ‘history’ were put forward to re-present historic cases as ‘proto-types’ for studying Alzheimer’s disease in the present. (shrink)

This paper examines medical scientists’ accounts of their rediscoveries and reassessments of old materials. It looks at how historical patient files and brain samples of the first cases of Alzheimer’s disease became reused as scientific objects of inquiry in the 1990s, when a genetic neuropathologist from Munich and a psychiatrist from Frankfurt lead searches for left-overs of Alzheimer’s ‘founder cases’ from the 1900s. How and why did these researchers use historical methods, materials and narratives, and why did the biomedical community (...) cherish their findings as valuable scientific facts about Alzheimer’s disease? The paper approaches these questions by analysing how researchers conceptualised ‘history’ while backtracking and reassessing clinical and histological materials from the past. It elucidates six ways of conceptualising history as a biomedical matter: (1) scientific assessments of the past, i.e. natural scientific understandings of ‘historical facts’; (2) history in biomedicine, e.g. uses of old histological collections in present day brain banks; (3) provenance research, e.g. applying historical methods to ensure the authenticity of brain samples; (4) technical biomedical history, e.g. reproducing original staining techniques to identify how old histological slides were made; (5) founding traditions, i.e. references to historical objects and persons within founding stories of scientific communities; and (6) priority debates, e.g. evaluating the role particular persons played in the discovery of a disease such as Alzheimer’s. Against this background, the paper concludes with how the various ways of using and understanding ‘history’ were put forward to re-present historic cases as ‘proto-types’ for studying Alzheimer’s disease in the present. (shrink)

Existing accounts of the early history of Alzheimer’s disease have focused on Alois Alzheimer’s (1864–1915) publications of two ‘peculiar cases’ of middle-aged patients who showed symptoms associated with senile dementia, and Emil Kraepelin’s (1856–1926) discussion of these and a few other cases under the newly introduced name of ‘Alzheimer’s disease’ in his Textbook of Psychiatry. This article questions the underpinnings of these accounts that rely mainly on publications and describe ‘presenility’ as a defining characteristic of the disease. Drawing on archival (...) research in the Munich psychiatric clinic, in which Alzheimer and Kraepelin practised, this article looks at the use of the category as a diagnostic label in practice. It argues that the first cases only got their exemplary status as key referents of Alzheimer’s disease in later readings of the original publications. In the 1900s, the published cases rather functioned as material to think about the limits of the category of senile dementia. The examination of paper technologies in the Munich psychiatric clinic reveals that the use of the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease was not limited to patients of a certain age and did not exclude ‘senile’ cases. Moreover, the archival records reflect that many diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease were noted in the medical records as suspicions rather than conclusions. Against this background, the article argues that in theory and practice, Alzheimer’s disease was not treated as a well-defined disease entity in the Munich clinic, but as an exploratory category for the clinical and histopathological investigation of varieties of organic brain diseases. (shrink)

This paper summarizes (in German) recent tendencies in the philosophy of the life sciences.

Abstract[I] want to single out one phenomenon that could be called the ‘politics of sources’. It points to the extent to which the histories that both scientists and historians can write are artifacts of the available sources. The Rockefeller Foundation not only opened its archives very early on for historical work but also invested a lot in making the archives readily available for historical exploration. During the 1980s, many young historians took advantage of this opportunity. Thus, in a relatively early (...) phase of the professional historiography of molecular biology, one could have gained the impression that the development of the new biology as a whole was a bio‐politically directed enterprise of the Rockefeller Foundation sustained by the vision that social processes could ultimately be controlled by biological processes. (shrink)

In psychiatry there is no sharp boundary between the normal and the pathological. Although clear cases abound, it is often indeterminate whether a particular condition does or does not qualify as a mental disorder. For example, definitions of ‘subthreshold disorders’ and of the ‘prodromal stages’ of diseases are notoriously contentious. -/- Philosophers and linguists call concepts that lack sharp boundaries, and thus admit of borderline cases, ‘vague’. Although blurred boundaries between the normal and the pathological are a recurrent theme in (...) many publications concerned with the classification of mental disorders, systematic approaches that take into account philosophical reflections on vagueness are rare. This book provides interdisciplinary discussions about vagueness in psychiatry by bringing together scholars from psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, history, and law. It draws together various lines of inquiry into the nature of gradations between mental health and disease and discusses the individual and societal consequences of dealing with blurred boundaries in medical practice, forensic psychiatry, and beyond. -/- Part I starts with an overview chapter that helps readers to navigate through the philosophy of vagueness and through the various debates surrounding demarcation problems in the classification and diagnosis of mental illness. Part II encompasses historical and recent philosophical positions on gradualist approaches to health and disease. Part III approaches the vagueness of present psychiatric classification systems, and the debates concerning their revisions by scrutinizing controversial categories, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, and the difficulties of day-to-day diagnostic and therapeutic practice. Part IV finally focuses on social, moral, and legal implications that arise when being mentally ill is a matter of degree. (shrink)

In psychiatry there is no sharp boundary between the normal and the pathological. Although clear cases abound, it is often indeterminate whether a particular condition does or does not qualify as a mental disorder. For example, definitions of ‘subthreshold disorders’ and of the ‘prodromal stages’ of diseases are notoriously contentious. Philosophers and linguists call concepts that lack sharp boundaries, and thus admit of borderline cases, ‘vague’. This overview chapter reviews current debates about demarcation in psychiatry against the backdrop of key (...) issues within the philosophical discussion of vagueness: Are there various kinds of vagueness? Is all vagueness representational? How does vagueness relate to epistemic uncertainty? What is the value of vagueness? Given the immense social, moral, and legal importance of demarcating the normal from the pathological in psychiatry, what are the pros and cons of gradualist approaches to mental disorders, that is, of construing boundaries as matters of degree? (shrink)

Background: The brief generic Multicultural Quality of Life Index is a culturally informed self-report 10-item questionnaire used to measure health-related quality of life. QoL is an important outcome measure in guiding healthcare and is held as a substantial parameter to evaluate the effectiveness of healthcare. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in children might negatively influence the parents’ QoL. Having a validated questionnaire to measure QoL for this population will therefore be a vital first step in guiding healthcare for parents of children (...) with ADHD. We aimed to examine the reliability and validity of the Norwegian version of the MQLI in a sample of parents of children with ADHD.Methods: In a cross-sectional study, 128 parents of children with ADHD were recruited from four outpatient clinics within the Child and Adolescents Mental Health Services in Norway. They completed the MQLI along with an alternative well-being scale, the Five-item World Health Organization Well-being Index, and a form including demographic variables. Reliability and validity of the MQLI were examined. We conducted a factor analysis and calculated internal consistency and the correlation between the MQLI and the WHO-5.Results: Factor analysis of the parents reported MQLI yielded a one-factor solution. For the MQLI, Cronbach’s alpha was 0.73. The correlation between the two measures of MQLI and WHO-5 was high, reflecting convergent validity since the association between the two measures was strong.Conclusion: Results from this study support the reliability and validity of the Norwegian version of the MQLI for assessment of quality of life in parents of children with ADHD with good psychometric properties. Study findings support the use of the questionnaire in CAMHS. (shrink)

Eyewitnesses to crimes sometimes search for a culprit on social media before viewing a police lineup, but it is not known whether this affects subsequent lineup identification accuracy. The present online study was conducted to address this. Two hundred and eighty-five participants viewed a mock crime video, and after a 15–20 min delay either viewed a mock social media site including the culprit, viewed a mock social media site including a lookalike, or completed a filler task. A week later, participants (...) made an identification from a photo lineup. It was predicted that searching for a culprit on social media containing the lookalike would reduce lineup identification accuracy. There was a significant association between social media exposure and lineup accuracy for the Target Present lineup, but for the Target Absent lineup there was no significant association with lineup identification accuracy. The results suggest that if an eyewitness sees a lookalike when conducting a self-directed search on social media, they are less likely to subsequently identify the culprit in the formal ID procedure. (shrink)

O presente artigo analisa a leitura de Hannah Arendt sobre os textos de Franz Kafka, o que será feito a partir do prefácio de Entre o passado e o futuro, dos ensaios Franz Kafka: uma reavaliação e O judeu como pária: uma tradição oculta, além das narrativas kafkianas Descrição de uma luta, O Processo, O Castelo e da parábola Ele, identificando tanto o que as vincula como o definhamento do humano retratado pelo escritor. Porquanto o absurdo que reveste o cenário (...) descrito por Kafka é percebido por Arendt como um presságio dos horrores praticados pelos regimes totalitários, nossa hipótese é que discutir a leitura da autora sobre os textos kafkianos auxilia a compreensão sobre as consequências desastrosas que as relações sociais podem acarretar e a desfiguração fomentada pela burocracia como aparelho organizacional e forma de governo que normaliza os procedimentos de rotina, os massacres administrativos, a obediência cadavérica e os processos infindáveis baseados em legislações superiores, utilizados como meios de gerir indivíduos desarraigados, indistinguíveis e massificados. (shrink)

Tarihte herhalde çok az soru Tanrı’nın varlığı sorusu kadar sık sorulmuş, çok yanıtlanmış ve verilen birbirinden farklı onca yanıta rağmen kesin bir sonuca ulaştırılamayıp tartışılmaya devam etmiştir. Yine de geçmişe dönüp baktığımızda bu soruya verilen farklı yanıtların farklı uygarlıkların inşa edilmesine, bazılarının yıkılmasına, acımasız çatışmalara ve her şeye rağmen kucaklaşmalara da vesile olduğunu görüyoruz. Tanrı var mı? Varsa onu nasıl bilebiliriz? Tanrı yoksa her şey mubah mı? İnsan aklı ilahi olanı kavrayabilir mi? Tanrı’nın varlığı ahlaklı olmanın şartı mı? Evren akıllı (...) bir tasarımcının imzasını taşıyor mu? Bu kitapta felsefeci William David Beck, bu sorulara tarihte verilen yanıtları ve bu konudaki tartışmaları ele alarak meselenin genel ve tarihsel bir tablosunu bize sunuyor. Platon, Aristoteles, Marcus Aurelius gibi Eski Yunan ve Roma düşünürlerinden Anselmus, Thomas Aquinas, Augustinus ve Yahudi-Hıristiyan geleneğine, Doğu’nun bilgelerine, İbni Rüşd, Fârâbî ve Gazzâlî gibi İslam düşünürlerinden Alvin Plantinga, Graham Oppy, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Max Tegmark gibi Batılı modern ilahiyatçılara, bilim insanlarına ve Yeni Ateizm hareketine kadar uzanan bir çizgide “Tanrı var mı?” sorusuna verilen çeşitli yanıtları ve bu yanıtlara sunulan akılcı gerekçeleri ortaya koyarak soruya felsefece bir yanıt vermenin nasıl bir iş olduğunu da gösteriyor. (shrink)

Kant’s _Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals_, first published in 1785, is still one of the most widely read and influential works of moral philosophy. This Broadview edition combines a newly revised version of T.K. Abbott’s respected translation with material crucial for placing the _Groundwork_ in the context of Kant’s broader moral thought. A varied selection of other ethical writings by Kant on subjects including our moral duties, fundamental principles of justice, the concept of happiness, and the relation of morality (...) to religion are included, along with important criticisms of Kant’s ethics by Fichte, Schiller, Hegel, and Sidgwick. (shrink)

Lara Buchak sets out a new account of rational decision-making in the face of risk. She argues that the orthodox view is too narrow, and suggests an alternative, more permissive theory: one that allows individuals to pay attention to the worst-case or best-case scenario, and vindicates the ordinary decision-maker.

There are currently two robust traditions in philosophy dealing with doxastic attitudes: the tradition that is concerned primarily with all-or-nothing belief, and the tradition that is concerned primarily with degree of belief or credence. This paper concerns the relationship between belief and credence for a rational agent, and is directed at those who may have hoped that the notion of belief can either be reduced to credence or eliminated altogether when characterizing the norms governing ideally rational agents. It presents a (...) puzzle which lends support to two theses. First, that there is no formal reduction of a rational agent’s beliefs to her credences, because belief and credence are each responsive to different features of a body of evidence. Second, that if our traditional understanding of our practices of holding each other responsible is correct, then belief has a distinctive role to play, even for ideally rational agents, that cannot be played by credence. The question of which avenues remain for the credence-only theorist is considered. (shrink)

Dünya genelinde yaşanan çatışmalarda dinî inanç ve değerlerin araçsal kullanımı, din ve şiddet konularının merkeze alındığı birçok tartışmaya kaynaklık etmektedir. Yapılan tartışmalar dinî inanç ve değerlerin şiddet içeren davranışlara neden olduğu varsayımı etrafında şekillense de din ve şiddet arasında var olan ilişki oldukça karmaşık bir yapıya sahiptir. Zira, dinsel geleneklerin merkezinde yer alan kutsal metinler, savaş ve şiddet içeren örnek ve sembollerin yanı sıra barış ve uzlaşı içeren taleplere de sahiptir. Başka bir ifade ile dinî gelenekler, tarihî süreç içerisinde hem (...) temel ahlaki değerlerin hayata geçirilmesi hem de barışçıl tutumların benimsenmesinde ilham verici bir kaynak olarak hizmet etmişlerdir. Diğer taraftan insanlık tarihinin en kötü örnekleri de dinî inanç ve değerler ile bağlantılıdır. Tarihî kayıtlar, din adına yapılan savaşlarda binlerce insanın hayatını kaybettiğine ve bir o kadarının da doğrudan ya da dolaylı şiddete maruz kaldığına işaret etmektedir. Öyleyse kutsal metinlerde yer alan herhangi bir pasajdan ya da geçmişte yaşanmış olumlu ya da olumsuz herhangi bir örnekten hareketle dinî inanç ve değerlerin bütünüyle savaşa veya barışa hizmet ettiğini söylemek gerçekçi bir tutum olmayacaktır. Bununla beraber Amerika’da gerçekleşen 11 Eylül saldırıları dinsel şiddet konusunda farklı görüşlerin öne sürülmesine neden olmuştur. İronik bir şekilde 2001’de dinî terörizm ile mücadele kararı alan Amerika’nın dinî inanç ve değerleri şiddetin meşrulaştırılmasında bir araç olarak kullanması, 11 Eylül’ün benzer saldırılar için bir arketip olarak kullanılmasına zemin oluşturmuştur. Zira Müslüman olduğu iddia edilen 19 kişinin kaçırdığı 4 uçağın Dünya Ticaret Merkezi’ne yapılan saldırı için kullanılması sadece dinsel şiddet tartışmalarının İslâm ve Müslümanlar üzerinden yapılmasına neden olmamış aynı zamanda İslâm coğrafyasının yeniden şekillenmesine neden olacak askeri ve siyasi kararların alınmasına da zemin oluşturmuştur. Bu saldırı neticesinde dinsel terör örgütlerine karşı harekete geçtiğini iddia eden Bush, verilen mücadeleyi şeytani güçlere karşı “haçlı seferi” olarak yorumlayarak Afganistan ve Irak’ta on binlerce insanın ölmesi ile sonuçlanan askeri operasyonlara başlamıştır. Benzer şekilde 7 Ekim 2023 tarihinde, "Aksa Tufanı” adı verilen operasyon ile Hamas’ın İsrail’e saldırması Netenyahu’nun Yeşaya kehaneti üzerinden temellendirdiği bir savaşın Gazze’de başlaması ile sonuçlanmıştır. Aksa Tufanı operasyonunun ardından bölgede sınırların yeniden çizileceğini söyleyen İsrail yönetimi, 7 Ekim olaylarını “İsrail’in 11 Eylül’ü” olarak isimlendirmiş ve kadın-erkek, genç-yaşlı ayrımı yapmaksızın binlerce sivilin ölmesine neden olacak saldırılara başlamıştır. Yaşanan çatışmalar her ne kadar teopolitik, ekonomik ya da kültürel nedenlere dayansa da şiddetin meşrulaştırılmasında din dilinin kullanılması kanaatimizce din ve şiddet konusu ile ilgili tartışmaların araştırılmasını gerektirmektedir. Bu nedenle dinsel şiddet tartışmaları bağlamında ele alınan bu çalışmada genel bir değerlendirme yapılması amaçlanmıştır. Konu incelenirken önce 11 Eylül saldırılarından günümüze dinsel şiddet tartışmaları ile ilgili farklı bakış açıları üzerinde durulmuş daha sonra monoteist geleneğe ait kutsal metinlerde yer alan şiddet ifadelerinin tarihî süreç içerisinde farklı şekillerde yorumlandığına dikkat çekilerek dinsel olarak nitelenen şiddet eylemlerinin çok sayıda ve karmaşık nedenlere dayandığı gösterilmeye çalışılmıştır. Konu Yahudi, Hıristiyan ve İslâm gelenekleri üzerinden ele alınmış ve monoteist geleneğe ait dinî inanç ve değerlerin şiddete referans olarak gösterildiği örnekler ile sınırlandırılmıştır. Fenomenolojik bakış açısı ile ele alınan araştırmada dinsel olarak ifade edilen şiddet eylemlerinin belli amaçlar doğrultusunda kutsal metinlerin yeniden yorumlanması ve yeni yorumun idealleştirilmesi ile ilişkili olduğu görülmüştür. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of what it is to have faith in a proposition p, in both religious and mundane contexts. It is argued that faith in p doesn’t require adopting a degree of belief that isn’t supported by one’s evidence but rather it requires terminating one’s search for further evidence and acting on the supposition that p. It is then shown, by responding to a formal result due to I.J. Good, that doing so can be rational in a (...) number of circumstances. If expected utility theory is the correct account of practical rationality, then having faith can be both epistemically and practically rational if the costs associated with gathering further evidence or postponing the decision are high. If a more permissive framework is adopted, then having faith can be rational even when there are no costs associated with gathering further evidence. (shrink)

In the peer disagreement debate, three intuitively attractive claims seem to conflict: there is disagreement among peers on many important matters; peer disagreement is a serious challenge to one’s own opinion; and yet one should be able to maintain one’s opinion on important matters. I show that contrary to initial appearances, we can accept all three of these claims. Disagreement significantly shifts the balance of the evidence; but with respect to certain kinds of claims, one should nonetheless retain one’s beliefs. (...) And one should retain them even though these beliefs would not be supported by the new total evidence if one didn’t already hold them. (shrink)

This paper investigates the nature and foundation of duties to oneself in Kant’s moral theory. Duties to oneself embody the requirement of the formula of humanity that agents respect rational nature in them‐selves as well as in others. So understood, duties to oneself are not subject to the sorts of conceptual objections often raised against duties to oneself; nor do these duties support objections that Kant’s moral theory is overly demanding or produces agents who are preoccupied with their own virtue. (...) Duties to oneself emerge as an essential and compelling part of Kant’s moral theory. (shrink)

Many view cancellation as a method for holding influential personalities accountable for bad behavior, while others think cancelling amounts to censorship and bullying. I hold that neither of these accounts are worth pursuing, especially if the aim is social progress. In this paper, I offer a situated account of cancellation and cancel culture, locating the phenomenon in our exclusionary history while examining the social dynamics of belief. When we situate cancel culture, we can see how problematic instances of cancelling are (...) embedded in ignorance. While combatting ignorance appears to call for a remedy rooted in feminist standpoint epistemology, there are risks in adopting naive practices of deference. Applying criticisms of epistemic injustice and adopting Táíwò’s elite capture framework, I explain how well-intentioned cancelling can work against social movements. Since epistemic trust mechanisms discourage self-reflection and belief revision, the relevant tactics for enacting social change—coalition politics and education—seem out of reach. I conclude by sketching cancel culture as a diagnostic tool: cancellation can be used appropriately in marginalized communities, but when it comes to combatting ignorance among privileged folks, we should view cancel culture as a method for determining where our social institutions are failing us. (shrink)

The ‘rollback argument,’ pioneered by Peter van Inwagen, purports to show that indeterminism in any form is incompatible with free will. The argument has two major premises: the first claims that certain facts about chances obtain in a certain kind of hypothetical situation, and the second that these facts entail that some actual act is not free. Since the publication of the rollback argument, the second claim has been vehemently debated, but everyone seems to have taken the first claim for (...) granted. Nevertheless, the first claim is totally unjustified. Even if we accept the second claim, therefore, the argument gives us no reason to think that free will and indeterminism are incompatible. Furthermore, seeing where the rollback argument goes wrong illuminates how a certain kind of incompatibilist, the ‘chance-incompatibilist,’ ought to think about free will and chance, and points to a possibility for free will that has remained largely unexplored. (shrink)

One phenomenon arising in epistemic life is allegiance to, and break from, a tradition. This phenomenon has three central features. First, individuals who adhere to a tradition seem to respond dogmatically to evidence against their tradition. Second, individuals from different traditions appear to see the same evidence differently. And third, conversion from one tradition to another appears to be different in kind from ordinary belief shift. This paper uses recent work on the nature and rationality of faith to show that (...) these features can all emerge from individuals acting rationally—in particular, from individuals rationally having faith in the core assumptions of their traditions. One upshot is that we don't need to employ the idea of incommensurability to explain these features. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that faith is recalcitrant in the face of new evidence, but it is puzzling how such recalcitrance could be rational or laudable. I explain this aspect of faith and why faith is not only rational, but in addition serves an important purpose in human life. Because faith requires maintaining a commitment to act on the claim one has faith in, even in the face of counter-evidence, faith allows us to carry out long-term, risky projects that we (...) might otherwise abandon. Thus, faith allows us to maintain integrity over time. (shrink)

Faith is a central attitude in Christian religious practice. The problem of faith and reason is the problem of reconciling religious faith with the standards for our belief-forming practices in general (‘ordinary epistemic standards’). In order to see whether and when faith can be reconciled with ordinary epistemic standards, we first need to know what faith is. This chapter examines and catalogues views of propositional faith: faith that p. It is concerned with the epistemology of such faith: what cognitive attitudes (...) does such faith require, what epistemic norms govern these attitudes, and whether Christian faith can ever adhere to them. (shrink)

In “Can it be rational to have faith?”, it was argued that to have faith in some proposition consists, roughly speaking, in stopping one’s search for evidence and committing to act on that proposition without further evidence. That paper also outlined when and why stopping the search for evidence and acting is rationally required. Because the framework of that paper was that of formal decision theory, it primarily considered the relationship between faith and degrees of belief, rather than between faith (...) and belief full stop. This paper explores the relationship between rational faith and justified belief, by considering four prominent proposals about the relationship between belief and degrees of belief, and by examining what follows about faith and belief according to each of these proposals. It is argued that we cannot reach consensus concerning the relationship between faith and belief at present because of the more general epistemological lack of consensus over how belief relates to rationality: in particular, over how belief relates to the degrees of belief it is rational to have given one’s evidence. (shrink)

Decision theory has at its core a set of mathematical theorems that connect rational preferences to functions with certain structural properties. The components of these theorems, as well as their bearing on questions surrounding rationality, can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Philosophy’s current interest in decision theory represents a convergence of two very different lines of thought, one concerned with the question of how one ought to act, and the other concerned with the question of what action consists (...) in and what it reveals about the actor’s mental states. As a result, the theory has come to have two different uses in philosophy, which we might call the normative use and the interpretive use. It also has a related use that is largely within the domain of psychology, the descriptive use. This essay examines the historical development of decision theory and its uses; the relationship between the norm of decision theory and the notion of rationality; and the interdependence of the uses of decision theory. (shrink)

Individual differences in convergent and divergent thinking may uniquely explain variation in analogical reasoning ability. Across two studies we investigated the relative influences of divergent and convergent thinking as predictors of verbal analogy performance. Performance on both convergent thinking and divergent thinking uniquely predicted performance on both analogy selection and analogical generation tasks. Moreover, convergent and divergent thinking were predictive above and beyond creative behaviours in Study 1 and a composite measure of crystallised intelligence in Study 2. Verbal analogies in (...) Study 2 also varied in semantic distance, with results demonstrating divergent thinking as a stronger predictor of analogy generation for semantically far than for semantically near analogies. Results thus further illuminate the link between analogical reasoning and creative cognition by demonstrating convergent and di.. (shrink)

Suppose we want to do the most good we can with a particular sum of money, but we cannot be certain of the consequences of different ways of making use of it. This article explores how our attitudes towards risk and ambiguity bear on what we should do. It shows that risk-avoidance and ambiguity-aversion can each provide good reason to divide our money between various charitable organizations rather than to give it all to the most promising one. It also shows (...) how different attitudes towards risk and ambiguity affect whether we should give to an organization which does a small amount of good for certain or to one which does a large amount of good with some small or unknown probability. (shrink)